Simulator grays out Trigger App Settings when background process runs

I'm adding Open Weather support to a watch face, with a background process that pulls down the weather data on a schedule. And what I'm finding is, when that background process triggers, the simulator grays out the Trigger App Settings option. When the simulator first starts, the option is available to me, and I can get to my settings menu just fine. But as soon as the background process runs, the option grays out. I can actually watch it happen if I have the simulator Settings menu open. As soon as the background process runs, the option grays out. And it stays grayed out until I restart the simulator.

Any thoughts on why this is happening? There are no errors / crashes / or any messages other than my own println output in the debug console.

Thanks.

jim_m_58 over 1 year ago

Right below Trigger App Settings is Timeout App Settings. Can you select that?

If I select Timeout App Settings, Trigger App Settings is no longer grayed out.

jim_m_58 over 1 year ago in reply to jim_m_58

Ok, I've no see where bother Trigger And Timeout app settings are grayed out after a background service runs. I was using the watch face posted here: https://forums.garmin.com/developer/connect-iq/f/discussion/349473/simple-example-wf-that-shows-a-bunch-of-things

kzibart over 1 year ago

Thanks for the replies. Both Timeout and Trigger are grayed out when this happens. I'm used to having to click Timeout App Settings after using Trigger to be able to go back into the settings a second time. I wish it was that simple, but that's not what's happening here.

Here's my watch face I'm trying to update, although the published version doesn't have any background processing yet and never had this issue. It only started happening once I added the background processing.

Hourly Weather Analog

kzibart over 1 year ago in reply to kzibart

Here's a short screen capture video showing what's happening. It starts just before the background process runs, and you can see that Trigger App Settings is enabled in the simulator menu. Then the background process runs, and the simulator menu refreshes with Trigger App Settings grayed out.

https://youtu.be/Da6nwpjW5Ck

flocsy🤠 over 1 year ago

It makes sense as in background app you can't open the on-device app settings.

jim_m_58 over 1 year ago in reply to flocsy🤠

The background services runs in the background, and the main app is still running in the foreground. The background can run at most 30 seconds, and the "Trigger App Settings" selection remains grayed out long after the background runs. It's a bug in the sim. It's easy to see with the watch face (it's got the source code) in the link I posted.

kzibart over 1 year ago in reply to jim_m_58

Sorry, it wasn't clear from your earlier post that you had recreated the issue. I guess I'll just work around the simulator bug and finish my coding and testing, and then validate that everything works correctly on my device.

Thanks so much for looking into this and confirming the issue.

jim_m_58 over 1 year ago in reply to kzibart

Restarting the sim resolves the issue for me. For my Open Weather Map and Weather Underground stuff I use app-settings from a phone or Garmin Express, as the 32 character APIKeys are a pain to enter with on-device settings. If I recall, OWM has (or had) a limit on the free API Keys, so you probably want users to get their own and not hard code yours. Weather Underground does have a limit for sure, and there you have to have a weather station that sends data to WU to even get a key

kzibart over 1 year ago in reply to jim_m_58

Thanks for the advice. I did add the api key to the properties so it can be entered from the phone app settings, and I'm not pre-filling it with anything. If users want to use OWM over Garmin weather, then they'll have to get their own API key.

I'm glad the phone app settings option exists, but I love the flexibility of custom menu items on the device, so I use that for most things, even though it uses a ton of memory.